Saturday, April 4, 2009

4.4.09 Imai-cho

Today Bianca and I visited this tiny tiny town called Imai-cho where they preserved about 10 Edo period houses. They were so wonderfully laid out - tatami mats and shoji screens everywhere, and the owners were so welcoming. This area is preserved by the government in Japan, so they do a lot of restoration projects. We ate lunch in one of the Edo houses which used to be a sake mill - we spent over an hour there just hanging out in these people's house eating soba noodles and red bean soup (yum!). We also stumbled into another house in which a bunch of old ladies proceeded to take our clothes off and dress us in kimonos and take our pictures. We will never forget that experience! They were playing with our hair and telling us we were beautiful - they were so excited it was so incredible! Enjoy the pictures - OH and it was raining really hard the whole time we were there which kind of added to the mystique, another dreamy place!